New entrants
Setting up a first tire plant. Complete greenfield support, from land to the first tire off the line.
MUMBAI, INDIA · AVAILABLE FOR PROJECTS WORLDWIDE
Pradeep Kumar
Agarwal
Independent Consultant — Tire Plant Projects
35 years in tire plant projects. Formerly Senior Vice President – Projects at Yokohama Off-Highway Tires, directing a global greenfield and brownfield portfolio above USD 500 million from concept through commissioning. Greenfield builds, expansions, machinery, and projects that have stalled.
01 · PROFILE
Thirty-five years inside
tire plant projects.
PRADEEP KUMAR AGARWAL · MUMBAI, INDIA
I have delivered complete tire plants end to end — land, capex, construction, machinery, utilities, hiring and ramp-up — in senior project roles at JK Tyres, Goodyear and Yokohama Off-Highway Tires.
The record is specific. Mexico Phase 1 — USD 389 million, 255 TPD on 260 acres — came in at close to half the approved cost and timeline. Vizag was built and started up through the peak of COVID. A shut factory in Romania was revamped and restarted. Goodyear's Philippines plant was relocated to India.
Today I work independently. You get the person who ran these projects — not a firm, not a junior team — backed by specialists assembled per project and managed to one cost and schedule baseline.
0
YEARS IN TIRE PLANTS
0
PORTFOLIO DIRECTED
0
COUNTRIES DELIVERED
0
PLANTS BUILT / REVIVED
02 · WHAT I HELP WITH
The whole project,
or the piece that hurts.
Six areas of work. Take the full span, or bring me in exactly where the problem is.
01 End-to-end project management From feasibility and land to a running plant — one person accountable.
- Feasibility & capex
- Master schedule
- Cost control
- Vendor management
- Site reviews
- Board reporting
- Change control
- Civil & architecture
- Utilities & power
- Statutory approvals
- Hiring & org build
02 Machinery installation, commissioning & ramp-up Proven to your product. Held to rated output.
- Pre-arrival planning
- Erection supervision
- OEM coordination
- Process proving
- First-article approval
- Training & handover
- Spares & PM schedules
- Ramp to rated output
- First-year reliability
03 Used, relocated & legacy machinery Independent judgement before you buy — and the discipline to move it.
- Pre-purchase evaluation
- De-installation & shipping
- Cross-border relocation
- Re-erection
- Refurbishment
- Control retrofits
- Remaining-life assessment
- Bottleneck-free integration
- New vs. used advice
04 Global machinery & technology sourcing The right machine at the world-market price. No commission from anyone.
- Maker benchmarking
- Spec freezing
- Vendor shortlisting
- Price negotiation
- Owner-side terms
- Performance guarantees
- Stage inspections
- Spares packages
- Custom machinery
- Client-retained IP
05 Process & product technology The product sets the plant — never the other way round.
- Product & capacity plan
- Compound & mixing plan
- Quality plan
- Lab & uniformity
- MHPT benchmarking
- Manning charts
- Automation payback
- Energy per ton
- Renewables assessment
06 Project rescue & independent review Stalled projects put back on a base of facts.
- Technical & commercial audit
- Recoverable-value assessment
- Honest re-baseline
- Contract renegotiation
- Restart oversight
- Capex reality-check
- Lender advisory
- Board second opinion
ONE POINT OF ACCOUNTABILITY · NO GAP BETWEEN THE PEOPLE WHO PLAN AND THE PEOPLE WHO BUILD
03 · WHO I WORK WITH
If one of these is you,
the first conversation costs nothing.
Existing manufacturers
Adding capacity, products or automation — without stopping current production.
Stalled & troubled projects
Half-built sites, over-budget programmes, shut plants. An honest audit of what is recoverable — then a restart that holds.
Machinery buyers
New machines, a used line or a whole second-hand plant — independent judgement before the money moves.
Plants already running
Commissioning support, ramp-up help, or a hard look at conversion cost and energy per ton.
Investors, lenders & boards
Independent technical review of a tire project — before, during or after the commitment.
Engagements scale to the problem — a single conversation, a diagnostic review, an advisory retainer, a rescue mandate, or full consultancy through startup. Every one starts the same way: you describe the project, and I tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.
04 · HOW I WORK
Product first. One baseline.
No commissions.
The product defines the plant
Start from the tires you intend to sell. That fixes the process; the process fixes the machines; the machines fix the buildings. Plants designed the other way round pay for it every day for thirty years.
One person accountable
Owners usually assemble a technology consultant, an architect, an EPC contractor, a recruiter and a liaison agent — then spend two years reconciling them. I hold all of it against one cost baseline and one schedule.
Start as small as a phone call
You do not have to commit to anything to talk. The first conversation costs nothing — and it is usually where the most expensive mistakes get caught.
05 · FROM BARE LAND TO A RUNNING PLANT
STAGE 01 / 06
Land & site selection
Site due diligence, zoning and land-use conversion, and a master plan that fixes where every future phase will stand before the first truck arrives.
05 · FROM BARE LAND TO A RUNNING PLANT
- Land & site selection. Site due diligence, zoning and land-use conversion, and a master plan that fixes where every future phase will stand before the first truck arrives.
- Earthwork & foundations. Levelling, soil investigation and foundation design to the real loads of the equipment that will stand there — not to a generic factory standard.
- Structure & buildings. Steel frames, bay widths, crane duties and roof heights engineered around the process line, with expansion lanes designed into phase one.
- Utilities & infrastructure. Boilers, compressed air, chilled water, ETP/STP, fire hydrant systems and an HT substation with express feeders — sized on load studies, not nameplate sums.
- Machinery induction. Mixing, extrusion, calendering, building and curing equipment installed in sequence, supervised with OEM engineers and proved against the product specification.
- Commissioning & ramp-up. From the first trial tire to full-rate production, with a trained organisation and disciplined documentation behind it.
06 · PROCESS & PRODUCT TECHNOLOGY
How a tire is actually made.
Everything else rests on this chain. Every stage below is one I have specified machinery for, installed, commissioned and run.
- Mixing & compounding
- Calendering
- Extrusion
- Bead & apex
- Cutting & ply prep
- Tire building
- Curing
- Finishing & inspection
- Testing & uniformity
- Warehousing & dispatch
STATION 01 / 09
Carbon feeding & Banbury mixing
07 · TIRE SEGMENTS
Every tire segment. Every plant.
From passenger radials on fully automated lines to one-off Giant ROTR for mining haul trucks — plants I worked on produced each of these. Pick a segment to inspect it and see where it was built.
Passenger car radial
BUILT AT
- PCR — passenger car radial. Fully automated lines, ASRS warehousing. Built at the overseas PCR mega-plant (15,000 tires/day), Aurangabad, Vizag, Mexico.
- LTR — light truck radial. Aurangabad and Ballabgarh lines.
- TBR — truck & bus radial. Dahej 255 TPD greenfield.
- OHT / Agricultural — Vizag 280 TPD greenfield; Dahej, Tirunelveli, Israel and Japan expansions.
- OTR & Radial OTR — Dahej; Japan capacity enhancement.
- Giant ROTR — Romania revival and expansion; Gopalpur greenfield; Mexico Phase 2.
- Solid & industrial — Israel; Dahej all-steel.
- Retreading — process and equipment scope across the portfolio.
08 · PLANT LAYOUT
The layout decides the cost of
every tire you will ever make.
A tire plant layout is not a floor plan. It is the permanent decision about how far material travels, how many people it takes, and how much you can expand. Click any block to inspect it.
SELECT A BLOCK
Plant layout
A delivered greenfield layout, simplified. Material enters at raw material stores and leaves as finished tires from the warehouse. Every metre between those two points is conversion cost.
09 · PROOF, NOT PROMISES
Plants delivered faster and cheaper
than anyone had budgeted.
Delivered in senior project roles at JK Tyres, Goodyear and Yokohama Off-Highway Tires.
~50%
of approved cost and time
MEXICO PHASE 1 · USD 389 MN · 255 TPD
A greenfield on 260 acres with 100,000 sq. m of civil construction, planned and commissioned at close to half the originally approved project cost and timeline.
15
months, bare land to production
VIZAG · USD 320 MN · 280 TPD OHT + 50 TPD PCR
200,000 sq. m of construction and full production startup on 114 acres, executed through the peak of COVID with the fastest ramp-up achieved for OHT and PCR.
15,000
tires per day, fully automated
OVERSEAS PCR MEGA-PLANT · ASRS
Led from land execution through to startup of a fully automated facility, including ASRS automated warehousing.
405
TPD across TBR and Radial OTR
DAHEJ · 255 TPD + 150 TPD EXPANSION
200,000 sq. m of construction delivered on time, with the fastest ramp-up for OHT, all-steel ROTR and TBR.
Revived
a plant others had closed
ROMANIA · PLANT REVIVAL
A shut-down plant taken through complete revamp of civil, utilities, electricals, fire protection and legacy machinery to restart ROTR production, now expanding into Giant ROTR.
Relocated
across a border, and restarted
PHILIPPINES → BALLABGARH, INDIA
Goodyear's Philippines plant dismantled, moved and re-commissioned after major overhauls of the Banbury 270 mixer line, 8×8″ cold-feed extruder line, radial TBM and curing machines, in newly built facilities.
4
countries of expansion work
EXPANSIONS · ISRAEL · TIRUNELVELI · JAPAN · YOKOHAMA INDIA
Capacity enhancements, revamps and product-segment upgrades delivered inside running plants — including Yokohama India's expansion to 8,500 tires/day — plus the Gopalpur Giant Radial OTR greenfield directed in parallel with the Mexico programme.
10 · GLOBAL EXPOSURE
Project sites and the machine
makers behind them.
Projects in India, Mexico, Romania, Israel, Japan and the Philippines — and first-hand visits to tire-machinery makers across Europe, Asia and the USA.
11 · CAREER
Thirty-five years, one discipline.
Trainee engineer in 1991. Senior Vice President directing a global portfolio. Independent consultant today. Every rung of it inside tire plant projects.
1991
Trainee Engineer
JK Tyres
Engineer → Manager
JK Tyres
2005
Deputy Manager → DGM
Goodyear
2013
DGM → Senior Vice President
Yokohama OHT
NOW
Independent Consultant
Tire Plant Projects
2026 — PRESENT Independent Consultant — Tire Plant Projects Mumbai, India · available for projects worldwide
Independent advisory and project consultancy for owners, boards and lenders: greenfield and brownfield programmes, machinery sourcing and commissioning, used-machinery evaluation and relocation, and the rescue of stalled projects. One senior consultant — with proven specialists assembled per project and managed to a single cost and schedule baseline.
2013 — 2026 Senior Vice President — Projects Yokohama Off-Highway Tires (formerly ATC Tires) · Mumbai Head Office
Joined as DGM Projects / Project Head; promoted through General Manager to Senior Vice President. Directed the company's global greenfield and brownfield portfolio from concept through commissioning, steering multiple international projects in parallel with a live capital portfolio exceeding USD 500 million, and advising leadership on capacity strategy, capex and technology selection.
- Dahej, Gujarat: 255 TPD greenfield plus 150 TPD expansion for TBR and Radial OTR, from concept through the fastest-in-class production ramp-up.
- Vizag, Andhra Pradesh: 280 TPD OHT and 50 TPD PCR, from land execution to running plant in 15 months during peak COVID.
- Overseas: 15,000 tires/day fully automated PCR plant with ASRS warehousing, from land execution to startup.
- Mexico: Phase 1 greenfield at close to half the approved cost and timeline; Phase 2 for Giant ROTR and the Gopalpur, Odisha Giant Radial OTR greenfield directed in parallel.
- Romania: full revamp and restart of a shut-down plant for ROTR, with Giant ROTR expansion underway.
- Japan, Israel and Tirunelveli: capacity enhancement, revamps and product-segment upgrades.
- All statutory compliance: HT express feeders, CTE/CTO, pollution clearances, boiler certification, ISO and IATF/TS 16949 audits.
2005 — 2013 Deputy Manager to DGM — Projects Goodyear India · Aurangabad & Ballabgarh
Capacity-enhancement and relocation projects across two plants.
- Expanded the Aurangabad PCR plant to 12,000 tires/day through successive capacity-enhancement projects.
- Led the relocation of Goodyear's Philippines plant to Ballabgarh: dismantling, cross-border movement, overhaul of major machinery, re-erection and re-commissioning in newly constructed production buildings and admin offices.
- Delivered further expansion projects across the Aurangabad and Ballabgarh plants.
1991 — 2005 Trainee Engineer to Manager — Projects JK Tyres · Banmore, Gwalior, M.P.
Fourteen years learning the plant from the floor up.
- Worked through a complete greenfield plant build from scratch, gaining ground-up exposure to every stage of plant creation, followed by successive expansion projects.
- Ran predictive and plant maintenance and engineering performance monitoring across carbon feeding, mixing, dipping, extrusion, calendering, stock preparation, tire building, curing and final finish.
- Managed complete plant utilities: boilers and water treatment, 66/132 kV electricals, DG sets, ETP/STP and fire hydrant systems.
12 · TECHNICAL DOMAIN
What sits under the advice.
Process technologies
09
Carbon feedingBanbury 270 mixingDippingCold-feed extrusion (8×8″)CalenderingStock preparationRadial TBMCuringFinal finish
Plant infrastructure & utilities
10
Boilers & water treatment66/132 kV electricalsExpress feedersDG setsETP / STPFire protectionCompressed airPlant utilitiesASRS warehousingIT infrastructure
Product segments
10
PCRTBRLTROHT / AgriculturalOTRRadial OTRGiant ROTRSolid & industrialAll-steelRetreading
Systems & methods
10
TPMSix Sigma (Green Belt)LeanVSMCISPareto analysisPredictive maintenanceVibration & fluid analysisSAPISO / IATF 16949
EDUCATION & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
B.E. Mechanical EngineeringMadhav Institute of Technology & Science, Gwalior — 1990
Diploma in ManagementIGNOU, Delhi — 1997
PG Diploma, Personnel Management & IRInstitute of PM & IR, Chandigarh — 1993
Six Sigma Green BeltExtensive Lean and CIS training
Technical trainingHydraulics (Rexroth, Vickers, L&T, Parker); radial equipment; vibration analysis; predictive maintenance; SAP
Standards & auditsISO and IATF/TS 16949 documentation and audit regimes
13 · GET IN TOUCH
Build it right the first time.
Or let me fix it now.
Planning a tire plant, expanding one, buying machinery, or holding one that has lost its way. The first conversation costs nothing and carries no obligation.
PHONE+91 91674 34463
WHATSAPP+91 91674 34463
PHONE+91 98234 59669
EMAILpka_67@yahoo.com
linkedin.com/in/pradeep-kumar-agarwal
BASEDMumbai, India — available worldwide
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
1 · You call, WhatsApp or writeA few lines on where the project stands is enough. No deck required.
2 · I reply personallyThese numbers and this inbox reach me directly — not an office, not an assistant.
3 · You get a straight first viewWhether I can help, what I would look at first, and what an engagement could look like. No fee, no obligation.
WAYS TO ENGAGE
A single conversationSometimes one call is all a decision needs.
Diagnostic reviewSite, plan or capex reality-check — findings you can act on.
Advisory retainerAlongside your own project team, at the decisions that matter.
Rescue mandateA stalled project audited, re-baselined and restarted.
Full project consultancyFrom concept through commissioning to stable production.